Page 36 of A Recipe for Romance

‘He only told us two about the trench thing, because he didn’t want to get the workmen into trouble, and luckily all the bruises were where you couldn’t see them. He is so brave and kind!’

She sounded so admiring that I asked with sudden suspicion, ‘Poppy, you aren’t falling for Raffy, are you?’

‘Of course not! Whatever gave you that idea?’ she said, opening her blue eyes wide with amazement.

‘I like him, but he’s not a very comfortable person, somehow, is he?

You feel he’s a bit world-weary and…well, I don’t know how to describe it, but you feel that he’s been everywhere and done everything. ’

‘Yes, I know what you mean, and he probably has.’

‘But now he’s a reformed character, I expect his past experiences make him able to deal with all kinds of things.

He seems to have resolved the situation with Miss Winter and your grandfather already, doesn’t he?

She even said she thought she might have been a bit hasty in condemning Mr Lyon, when clearly Mann-Drake is a much greater threat to the happiness of the village. ’

‘That was pretty magnanimous.’

‘She’s found out a bit more about Mann-Drake and those rumours of some kind of not-so-secret society at his Devon house – the one that’s just burned down – did I say? Probably divine retribution!’

‘Maybe it was, in which case, Mann-Drake is clearly on the wrong side!’

‘She’s afraid he will try and start his goings-on here in Sticklepond. Raffy says he is going to go and talk to him when he comes back from London, though none of us is convinced that’s really a good idea, or that it will have any effect.’

‘No, if Mr Mann-Drake is styling himself somewhere between Aleister Crowley and Sir Francis Dashwood, I don’t think he’ll be swayed by a bit of a chat with the vicar, even if he is Raffy Sinclair.’

‘I hope Mann-Drake isn’t going to hold orgies at Badger’s Bolt,’ she said earnestly. ‘Apparently he’s converting the cowshed into some kind of big room, very oddly decorated.’

We couldn’t say any more then, because Jake and Kat came in and, since it was dark enough, Jake offered to demonstrate his firestick technique to Poppy before she left.

‘Stay for dinner?’ I offered. ‘Kat is, and we’re having pizza and ice cream in front of the TV tonight.’

‘I suppose I could. Mum was going out later and the work experience girl is there to help her at the moment, so I don’t suppose she’ll mind – if she notices at all.’

She went into the garden with Jake and Kat while I lingered behind and rifled the battered leather rucksack that does duty as Poppy’s handbag, removing a tiny bottle of viscous fluid from the junk at the bottom.

‘To induce love in the eyes of another’ it said, in a small spiky hand on the label: ‘Two drops to happiness.’

She’d seemed sincere about not falling for Raffy, but he didn’t appear to have lost much, if any, of his considerable charisma, so if there was even the slightest risk of her succumbing to it, then I needed to divert her attentions elsewhere.

Of course, this stuff probably wouldn’t work, any more than Grumps’ magical efforts ever did, but I would lose nothing by giving it a go as soon as I got her and Felix together and had the opportunity…

The revelation that Raphael Sinclair was the new vicar of Sticklepond appeared in the local paper and spread like wildfire around the further reaches of the district, relegating the news about the lido and tennis courts to second place, though in the village people were still seething about that, of course.

It didn’t seem that I could go anywhere without hearing Raffy’s name, and even dropping in for coffee with Felix meant I had to listen to a lecture on being grown-up and moving on, and how great it was that someone like Raffy should deign to come and lord it over our lowly little village!

‘Though the whole thing will probably be a seven-day wonder, because of course he’s been out of the public eye for years now, even if his music hasn’t,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose any of the younger people will be very excited, it will be just us oldies.’

‘Jake is,’ I said, wondering gloomily if I now ranked with the oldies.

‘Jake’s different. And I’ve told Raffy that if he wants to join us at the Falling Star tonight – or any other night – he’s welcome,’ he said, slightly defiantly.

I stared at him. ‘ I certainly won’t be going if he does! What were you thinking of? It’s always been just the three of us!’

‘There’s no reason why it can’t sometimes now be four, is there? I didn’t think you’d mind. You said you would have to get used to seeing him about.’

‘Yes, but seeing him walking about in the village is one thing,’ I said (I turned tail and fled whenever I glimpsed him in the distance), ‘but having him sitting opposite me in the snug at the Star is another!’

Felix was looking at me with unwonted criticism. ‘Raffy said you might still feel like that, and he wouldn’t come unless you said you didn’t mind.’

‘Well, I do mind having my personal space and my social life – what there is of it – invaded! My forgiveness doesn’t stretch that far yet.’

‘Aren’t you being a bit petty?’

‘I don’t think so – and I thought you understood how I felt,’ I said, and after that we came as close to an argument as we’d ever got in our whole lives.

That was all Raffy’s fault, too.